I’ve been investing great swathes of time listening to the Beastie Boys‘ audio commentaries of their best albums. They’re a blast, with the three now-veteran (OK, ‘old’) japesters collectively pressing tongues firmly into their cheeks.
Still, these insights are hugely revealing, particularly when it comes to the thorny issue of defining creativity itself. Much time is dedicated to bickering good-naturedly over whether an SP-1200 or Akai MPC-60 was used to sample a novelty cod-funk record, and by their own admission the hectic and brilliant Check Your Head took three years to make: of which two and a half was spent playing basketball.
Now that the World Series is over and the Yankees have won their 27th World Championship life around these parts can get back to normal. No more scheduling things around game time, waiting till the last out to go out, and missing everything I hope to see! That means this weekend I will finally have a chance to see Where the Wild Things Are my second most anticipated movie of the year (The Road is first) three weeks after it came out! At this point everyone’s probably seen it so don’t spoil it for me! Anyway, since I’ll be seeing the movie I thought it was a good time to look back on the career of the movie’s director Spike Jonze, specifically the amazing music videos that helped to kick start his ascent to fame! Jonze has worked with some of the best bands throughout the last two decades, putting an emphasis on dancing and movement in his videos and they are a spectacular collection of the best in all genres - rock, hip hop, dance, you name it he’s probably dabbled in it. He’s won tons of awards from MTV, has a DVD collection of most of his videos, and has pretty much done everything he could to push the music video into a new direction all of his own making. It was tough to narrow it down to 10, there are so many great ones, so feel free to chime and let us know what you think we left out! Enjoy!
Following the rather lackluster Coachella announcement last week, comes Bonnaroo’s initial lineup for 2009. At first glance, it’s quite the stellar lineup of bands, with the one glaring addition that jumped out at me being the Beastie Boys! The one time I attempted to see them live was back in 2000, when they were set to tour with Rage Against the Machine, but was canceled because Mike D broke his arm or something like that. Even now in 2009, they’re still up there (along with PJ Harvey) as a band I would still love to see.
2008 was a shit year for music.
With the economy falling down around us, the music industry continued to crumble under the pressure of the internet…falling down, down, down and barely even pulling in a cent (or so they would like you to believe). Bands inspired by the few cash cows we have left aped and copied their way through records. Folks were led to believe that a band like Fleet Foxes made a better, more lasting impression with their record then say someone like Deerhunter did.
Photos from a recent FOE gig - a friend of our friends Hold Your Horse Is - she’s gonna be big!!! Read the gig review after the jump.
Shots of North Carolina’s folk-rocking Avett Brothers’ stop in Glasgow - 22.08.11
Read the review of the gig here.
Take a look at the acts and art on offer at this year’s Latitude Festival in Suffolk. Included are the likes of Fight Like Apes, Lykke Li, Sea of Bees and Seasick Steve. Photos from our own...
Good time with Bad Guys. Photos from the May 29th gig at the Old Blue Last. Read the review by the Bad Guy himself, Stuart London after the jump.
Artrocker.com exclusive: for fans of White Lies and Crocodiles we’ve got some fresh pictures from their UK show at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire earlier this month, courtesy of Alessandro...
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